HomeCategoriesEnvironmentAward winning environmental litho printer gets into wide format with Roland

Award winning environmental litho printer gets into wide format with Roland

Written by Colin Gillman | 23 January 2012

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Anybody seeking proof of the convergence between litho/digital and wide format in the printing industry need look no further than BAPC member Greenhouse Graphics who recently got into wide format with Roland.

greenhouse3 Greenhouse, as its name might suggest, is widely recognised as a leading centre for sustainable graphic communications in the UK and has won many environmental awards for sustainable practices. Furthermore, Greenhouse was the first UK commercial print centre to install PV Solar panels in 2005, and has since developed its own sustainable printing system - ecoprintsystem4 - which is used throughout its commercial printing production facility.

Based in Basingstoke, North Hampshire, the firm is described by managing director Ian Crossley (pictured) as a communications specialist in graphic design, commercial printing, web design/development services, digital marketing, and recently signage and display systems having recently acquired a sign making company. “We no longer think of ourselves as a commercial litho printer,” he says.

Greenhouse is also one of only a handful print centres in the UK that is EMAS (Eco-Management & Audit Scheme) accredited. EMAS aims to recognise greenhouse1 and reward those organisations that go beyond minimum legal compliance and continuously improve their environmental performance. Therefore it goes without saying that introducing a Roland VS-640 eco-solvent wide format printer into the company’s ecoprintsystem4 framework would require serious consideration.

Mr Crossley and his team knew that in printing, energy was the biggest deciding factor and, as a sustainable printer and an environmentally conscious company, any wide format printer coming into the company’s ecoprintsystem4 workflow would have to deliver good energy performance in order to meet his company’s exacting energy performance criteria.

“We looked at three different types of wide format printers - including a latex printer – and we had to make some important decisions in choosing what would be the most energy efficient wide format printer for us,” he says. “Ultimately we knew that the machine would have to deliver good energy performance for it to be considered for purchase, and in that case the Roland came up trumps. Even though it is an eco-solvent machine, we felt that the energy issue was more important than the VOC issue.”